I spent some 15 days creating an Email campaign, sent it to some 10,000 emails…And guess what??? I received some 2000 delivery failure notices. And top of this, when I checked with few people, they had my email in their spam folder…phew!!! What a waste!!

This is a very common story for email marketers.

How do we do it right? How do we do it morally? How do we do it successfully? What is the right way? These are the questions that I am trying to answer through this blog.

Email marketing remains at the top of marketing strategies. It is also one of the easiest ways (so people say!!) Email marketing enables to connect and generate relationships with prospective customers. It will help lift marketing ROI. It is also called “direct to consumer” sales strategy. It is permission based marketing, where people provide their email address and then only you are able to send them targeted emails. Email marketing is trust building. It helps in building brand loyalty, growing website traffic, enhancing sales, strengthening relationships and generation of leads.

Consistent branding:

It happens very often that emails of a particular brand are not consistent. This tends to confuse the subscriber. It is very important that the look, feel of email message is consistent. Email should contain logo, slogan of the company. The general practice is to keep the same color combination that of the website. Consistency will give credibility to the message and clearer representation of your brand. Use clear and focused subject line. Subject line should tell the summary of your email. It is the first thing that your reader will see.

Creating email lists:

It is very tempting to buy database, and send hundreds and thousands of emails in one go. This is a dodgy practice of purchasing lists. In that case, rather than getting any advantage, your email address would be noted as spam or blocked. The best tactic is to create your own lists, of course it does take time but then it’s reliable. In this case, your list would be more real and responsive. Use reliable databases to store your emails. You should be able to apply appropriate filters to segment the audience. Segmenting could be done by knowing customer attributes. It could also be done by geographic location, age, gender etc. List segmentation helps in creating targeted audience and hence more open rate of your email.

Have a strategy in place:

What do you want to achieve with this email campaign? Most of the people answer this question vaguely or have no answer. Spend some time to create an approach for your email campaigns. Keep your emails focused. Research is essential before you actually run the campaign. The campaigns should have a focus, for example: newsletter, create visibility, launch of new product, offers, promotions, freebies etc. There is no magical formula for successful email marketing; it is all about right strategy. Do not sell!! Think of a situation, you walk in a store and a sales person runs behind you and asks you if you need help. Most of the times, our answer is “Thanks, NO…I am just looking”. Maybe, you were looking for something to buy, but you don’t like to be pushed. Don’t let email campaign create that feeling. Let people be genuinely interested in your email.

Frequency and timings:

How many emails per week are too many? How many emails per month are too less? You are the best judge to give this answer. Do not send emails just because you have to send 1 email per week. Do so only when you have some message to convey to the people. Deliver something that adds value to your brand.

What time should I send emails?

For example, if I have a resort and providing weekend offer of say 25%. If I send this offer email on Monday @ 11 am, it might not be effective as by the weekend that email will be crushed under loads of emails. In this case, Thursday @ 4 pm would be more effective.

Do not bombard inboxes of other people just because you have too much to say!!!

You can learn more by experience as you create campaigns and work out the frequency and time that suits you. Select your prime time!!!

Opt-out facility:

You may find this odd but YES!!! Respect whether people want to see your email or not. You need to give them the option of Unsubscribing. This is indeed best way to keep your email list updated and optimized. In many countries, the penalties for not following these rules are heavy.

This was from my side on Email marketing. Feel free to add your comments.

About the author: The author Mrs Harshal Varkhedkar is a budding blogger with background of Electronics graduation and Masters in IT. She enjoys teaching and runs a computer institute in Pune.